Lisk: Manning’s quick release kept Chiefs at bay

After watching through the game, I am going with a heavy dose of Manning, with an emphasis (even moreso than normal for him) on getting the ball out of his hand quickly because of the sore ankle, with an assist to the receivers winning the one-on-one matchups with the secondary. You can also throw in Manning dominating the pre-snap read battle, so that he was often able to throw to his initial or secondary read very quickly after the ball hit his hands.

Most of the media's plaudits (including Jon Gruden's last night) have been aimed at the Denver offensive line, and PFF even criticizes Peyton Manning for not having completed many passes downfield on Sunday.

But as Jason Lisk explains, Peyton got rid of the ball so quickly that the line wasn't asked to do much, and given that his longest time holding the ball was 3.2 seconds, how could he have aired it out?

Doug is IAOFM’s resident newsman and spelling czar. Follow him on Twitter @IAOFM

DVOA and DYAR have tons of flaws, too, but it also has its place. DVOA/DYAR measure how effective the passing game is in general (i.e. measuring outcomes) and then assumes that that is a fair representation of a player's contributions. I tend to be sympathetic to that view, and believe that in the long run, good players are going to consistently create good outcomes. That's what makes them good players. I believe in intangibles, but I think that DVOA is precisely the system that will best capture and record those intangibles. Something that is intangible is not immeasurable (and, conversely, something that is immeasurable does not exist). If a quarterback has some super-magical "leadership" ability that makes his receivers try extra super special hard, and run their routes 10% faster and 18% crisper, then that "leadership" will show up in DVOA, DYAR, EPA, WPA, and all other advanced statistics that are merely measuring outcomes (but it will not show up in process-centric statistics such as PFF ratings). And a lot of what Peyton brings to the table is intangible (pre-snap reads, checking to the correct play, neutralizing the opposing pass rush), which PFF fails to capture and grade.

As a great example of this, and demonstrating an uncharacteristic lack of awareness, PFF this week criticized Peyton Manning for rushing throws despite rarely being pressured, completely oblivious to the fact that the reason he was rarely pressured is because HE WAS RUSHING THROWS. You can't ding a guy for rushing his throws without also crediting the fact that nobody touched him because he was rushing throws.

Still, DVOA and DYAR are not without some glaring flaws of their own. Notably, the stats are almost completely useless for receivers. They HEAVILY reward guys who don't get many targets while HEAVILY penalizing guys who get a ton of targets without pausing to consider that, hey, maybe the reason this guy is getting so many targets is because he's actually a pretty good player. The top of the receiver rankings are constantly dominated by secondary or tertiary options. Grading the quarterback by the outcomes of the passing game is generally fine, but when you try to parse out the responsibility any finer than that and allocate it to individual receivers, things get laughable in a hurry.

Also, another methodological flaw with Football Outsiders is the only desirable outcomes for them are yards, first downs, and (late in the game) killing clock. Knowshon Moreno probably graded out pretty terribly for his play this last week, but I'm sure Denver was very happy with his contributions. How can I be so sure? The fact that they called his number 27 times is a pretty good place to start, I think. While the particular outcome of Moreno's plays didn't do much to advance the ball down the field, you can bet it did a whole hell of a lot to slow oncoming KC rushers, which freed the rest of the passing offense up to move the ball.

To bring this train into the station, I think the proliferation of different stats and viewpoints is an unquestionably good thing. All of these new stats are a dramatic improvement over what was available 15 years ago. At the same time, all of these new stats are still kind of garbage in their own right. They're a step in the right direction, and they can provide a lot of information that would otherwise be hidden and shed a lot of light on difficult subjects, but saying that they correspond with reality better than the alternative did doesn't necessarily mean they correspond all that well with reality.

Posted by Kibbles on 2013-11-20 12:42:39

I understand your point about standardized grading, and I could have phrased it better, you´re right. But beyond the independent-from-context flaw, which you perfectly explained, I still believe their grading system is problematic across positions. It seems to reward strongly a few vital aspects in DL play, for instance (TFL, sacks, hits, deflected passes, etc), which in a vacuum is useful (except for the fact players like Wolfe whose main contribution is helping free other players are derided as unproductive, of course), especially since stat sheets rarely reflect the value of the OL and DL, but when it comes to QBs, it fails to account for the wide variety of the aspects required by the position and that make it so important, which is why grades for QBs are so low compared to other positions.

For instance, it overemphasizes long completions (sure, their revised accuracy percentage corrects some of the drop, but when they give out grades after a game, it´s the raw completion percentage they use), while utterly ignoring adjustments at the line of scrimmage. In other words, it judges QBs as pure passers, and not as offensive lynchpins (I understand it´s not easy to grade, but given how many QBs have the option to audible in today´s NFL, it means ignoring a very large part of what the QB job entails nowadays). It means some players are systematically underestimated while others are consistently overvalued (this year, for instance, I´ve found their assessment of Luck slanted in that direction).

I share your overview of the site, in general. It´s a very good tool, and invaluable for assessments of linemen in particular, but when it comes to QBs, their evaluation doesn´t hold a candle to DVOA and DYAR, in my opinion.

Posted by Goéland on 2013-11-19 17:38:37

Just because there are different positional baselines doesn't mean it's a structural weakness. The yards per attempt for running backs range from 3.0 to 5.0, and for quarterbacks they range from 6.0 to 8.0. A 40% catch rate would be historically bad for a receiver and historically good for a linebacker. Different positions, different measurements, different baselines, different goals. As long as the grading is internally consistent- as long as the results are comparable within a position- it doesn't much matter if the grades are not directly comparable across positions. Perhaps you should argue that they should standardize their grades some to make them easier to digest at a glance, but I don't think you can call the fact that they aren't standardized a "structural weakness".

Of course, there certainly *ARE* some structural weaknesses to PFF's methods. They purport to grade a player's performance completely independent of what his teammates are doing. That's a fantastic idea. So, tell me... why does every offensive lineman grade out higher in seasons where he plays with Peyton Manning than in seasons where he doesn't? Seems to me like the ideal isn't really being reached in practice. IAOFM had another great illustration of that last year when discussing Elvis Dumervil and the Wide 9. PFF's grades would have you believe that Dumervil was one of the worst DEs in the entire NFL. IAOFM argued that Dumervil was a great DE, it's just the scheme he was playing in wasn't designed for him to make plays regularly. Dumervil leaves Denver, joins a different scheme, and wouldn't you know it... it turns out he's actually a pretty good DE after all! Who'd have thought it?!

This isn't to badmouth PFF. I think they're fantastic, actually, and I happily shell out for an annual subscription. I just think they oversell the ability of their statistics. They sell them as some sort of be-all, end-all measure of player performance, independent of scheme and supporting cast. In reality, that is far from the case.

Posted by Kibbles on 2013-11-19 16:21:00

The longest he held the ball was 3.2 s? That´s incredibly impressive (and goes a long way in explaining why his n1 grade by DVOA is well-deserved).

Posted by Goéland on 2013-11-19 12:38:17

Even a cursory look at PFF´s grades reveal some of the structural weaknesses of their approach, anyway. If you compare the grades required to enter their Hall-of-Fame pages, you see immediately that the threshold is much higher for some positions than others, and the corollary is that some positions regularly attain a much higher grade than others (regardless of the importance of that position). My take is that their eyeball-testing is really useful for evaluation of OL, DL and outside LBs, mainly, and that some of their other work on CBs and WRs provides good insight, but they don´t evaluate QBs well at all (safety is another position where I find their system lacking).

Posted by Goéland on 2013-11-19 12:11:25

You do know that PFF isn't a stats site, right? And, that their whole basis is your so-called eyeball test?

Posted by Douglas Lee on 2013-11-19 10:18:55

Raises all boats was the phrase (just meaning to be helpful, not being snotty).

I'm sorry you missed the Elway years bro. They were very good times. Elway was a much different QB than Manning, but he was just as great in his own way. He was the most clutch QB I've ever seen...his play level when it was crunch time was phenomenal...they called it Mile High Magic for a reason. :)

Posted by sadaraine on 2013-11-19 09:55:59

No, it'll be what Manning decides he can get away with (which will be the right decision)...and nothing different. If he feels he can get away with holding on to the ball, then he will.

Posted by John Tomasik on 2013-11-19 09:45:00

Statistics in football shouldn't be taken seriously. The approach is simply an exercise in varying degree of error. An eyeball-test can often be about as predictive as even the best of the stats in this sport.

In regards to Manning, Fox long ago said that Manning "....floats all boats....", or something to that effect. That much should be not only obvious but kept in mind. Last week's speculation (I did some myself) of what the offense should do was really a bunch of guessing, and I pointed out that when Manning steps up to the line, our speculation goes out the window and he'll make the decision...which will happen to be much more constructive than anything we guess at.

I'm enjoying the hell out of this. I missed the Elway years, so I've never seen an HOF QB run these Broncos. His abilities has this team making other teams look amateurish. And damn those stats.

Posted by John Tomasik on 2013-11-19 09:42:53

I appreciate PFF for looking beyond the raw statistics and creating meaningful analysis, but I have to take exception to Alex Smith receiving a higher rating than Manning. He completes less than 50% of his passes for less than 300 yards in a loss and gets a positive grade, whereas Manning completes 60% of his passes for over 300 yards in a win and he gets a negative grade? C'mon.

Posted by Hank Mardukis on 2013-11-19 09:27:34

As long as Manning is a one legged quarterback, the game plan will be to keep the plays as short as possible. Besides, with Manning not being able to plant his back foot properly his accuracy on long throws has declined. Until he gets better, it is what it is.